Only 26.1% of world silver comes from mines that produce silver as their main product, a record low. Why a 42% price rise bought just 3% more metal, what an ounce actually costs to mine, and why a deficit is not the same as a shortage.
Gold’s Job in a Quantum Computer Is Changing A quantum computer is a machine that calculates with qubits rather than bits. A bit in an ordinary computer is either a 0 or a 1. A qubit can hold a blend…
Copper is replacing silver in solar cells — but silver fell 47% in 2026 and the buildout never paused. What is actually driving the switch, what it saves, and the 25-year question nobody can answer yet.
How much silver is in a solar panel, why photovoltaic silver demand is falling even as installations hit records, how solar feeds the global silver deficit, and where demand could go through 2050.
What a solar panel is really made of — the silicon, silver, copper, critical minerals and industrial gases inside it, who controls each supply chain, and how solar's growth strains global commodity markets.
Silver Solid-State Batteries The battery that could give an electric car 600 miles of range and a nine-minute charge has no graphite anode at all. In its place sits a layer of silver about five micrometres thick — a hundredth…
What Strategic Metals Are Strategic metals are the metals a modern economy cannot function or grow without, whose supply is concentrated in few hands and hard to replace — the materials that AI data centers, electric cars, weapons systems, solar…
What Critical Minerals Are & Why They Matter A critical mineral is a raw material that a country’s economy and security depend on, but whose supply is vulnerable to disruption. That second half is what makes the word do work:…
The Future Uses of Uranium A single ceramic pellet of uranium fuel, about the size of a fingertip, holds as much energy as a tonne of coal. That fact is the whole reason uranium matters, and it is why a…
The Magnets the Future Runs On & the Country That Controls Them The strongest permanent magnet ever commercialised is a small slug of iron, boron, and a rare-earth metal called neodymium — and it is hiding inside almost everything that…
